There is an increased emphasis on the use of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) for performing various activities in both civilian and military situations where the use of manned flight vehicles may not be appropriate. Such missions include surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, target designation, data acquisition, communications relay, decoy, jamming, harassment, ordinance delivery, or supply.
Airborne surveillance systems typically include one or more aircraft that each carry one or more sensors for detecting, imaging or monitoring target items in an area under surveillance. Surveillance missions can be defined prior to flight by establishing definite objectives to be achieved. However, in other cases, mission objectives can change during a mission. In addition, multiple users can transmit requests for the collection of information to the aircraft in flight. This can result in conflicting requests or requests for operations that are not within the capability of a particular UAV.
There is a need for a method and system for processing the requests in an efficient manner.